Not long after the first proof of concept for iPhone malware surfaced, a piece of genuine malware for the iPhone has been spotted in the wild.

For the overwhelming majority of iPhone users, this really isn't much of a problem. Phones which have been activated and updated through iTunes are in no way vulnerable to either attack. Only phones which have been jailbroken and equipped with SSH are subject to the attack, which can be thwarted by changing the SSH password from the default.

But how do you change the SSH password? And what is the SSH default password anyway? If you have to ask yourself these questions, you may want to give some serious thought to restoring your jailbroken iPhone to its original settings. Running a jailbroken iPhone might not be for you.

In the early days, jailbreaking was performed by users who wanted to run third party apps on their iPhones. It was really the only way to get software installed and running until the App Store opened up. As jailbreaking became more popular, the process was streamlined and made much, much easier to do, This, however, glossed over the fact that you were performing a fairly serious modifaction on your phone, one which released Apple's own security protections. If you aren't very aware of what this means and how you can deal with it, then jailbreaking your iPhone probably isn't be best idea.

That's not to say that I think jailbreaking your iPhone is wrong or dangerous on its own, if you know what you're doing. Many of those who do run jailbroken phones are well aware of the danger of leaving a default password in place, and most of those users have long since closed up such a hole. Others, however, have jailbroken their handsets without really understanding what they were getting into, and perhaps this should serve as a wakeup call for those users to either read up on managing a jailbroken iPhone, or get back behind Apple's walled garden.

23 Nov 2009